I credit that very phrase, "Forgive and Forget" for my trauma induced amnesia. It was the family mantra while I was growing up. Still is, for all I know. It makes for allot more forgettance than forgiveness. Who needs to forgive what they can forget? It also makes for some seriously tangled memory functions and psycho snot knots. I don't trust any of my family members to remember what day of the week it is, but I trust them to argue with just about anything, including the day of the week.

After many years of proactive therapy work to heal my damaged memory banks, I believe that true forgiveness begs the warmth of remembering. I get further leaning ever so gently into those traumatic memories and working toward the forgiveness which doesn't require further damage to my memory functions. It is far easier said than done, but it works when I work it.

But that is me and every case is unique. . .

Gentle support while you find the approach which works best for you, Kayla.

Hi Kayla, thank you for reaching out, this is a good place!
Please check out the highly-regarded work of the late John Bradshaw on free youtube videos. He has the total opposite approach of "forgive and forget" and his work empowers people to heal their inner child so they can rise to new heights in healing and quality of life. I think you will find his work refreshing++++.
Peace and love, be gentle and good to yourself always.

Big hug for you Kayla.... If you can work through to forgive that's for you not for those who hurt you

It's so that the person(s) isn't taking room up in your head any more and you can move on with your life in a healthy way ... Therapy can help with this...

I don't think anyone here will be able to forget..... Another hug... xo

My family business was church evangelism, so there was a huge contradiction between our outward image and the weekly fisticuffs of domestic violence at home. The "forgive and forget" line turned into denial rather than forgiveness. First my mom had a mental breakdown that landed her in the hospital, and then years later my dad 's was spectacular enough to get him deported from the mission field. He never recovered his mind.

I kept the family faith, but decided to get beyond the denial that hadn't worked for either of my parents. Doing that didn't mean becoming unforgiving and bitter, in my case I looked at the old Kubler Ross stages of grief model. It goes "denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance." When I got to acceptance was when I got to the forgiveness in a way that worked, not only forgiving them but, most importantly, forgiving myself for being available for trauma too long.

Forgiveness for myself is still hard, but easier than forgiving those who wronged me, so to speak. I think... well, frankly, they weren't going to be remorseful, and I was no angel, and I was trained to think in such a way that all I'd do was end up blamin myself. I still default to "my fault".

That means I have ot forgive their actions. The people... I don't know.

But I will never forget. Trying to forget was my coping mechanism, and it got me *nowhere* in the long run.

All that to say, you may do this in bits and pieces. Forgive this because you understand *that*... then you may come to another realization and forgive the *actions*...

I, alas, cannot forgive thsoe who are not sorry. Since my two prime tormentors are dead, I will not know in this lifetime. I only hope to *be* forgiven for what I've done wrong, too.

Much support.

Oh yes, forgiving and forgetting, super nice idea. I was taught that, too. Way more complicated to actually do. And, I even want to forgive them. Sometimes I think I have forgiven someone and then realize later that there's something else that I still haven't forgiven them for.

One thing that helped me was, with one of the people who hurt me when I was a child I wondered, "why would they do that?" I came to the conclusion that they had needed some kind of help that they weren't able to get. Even though they hurt me repeatedly over years, and (though I didn't have the words for it back then) I had daily or at least multiple times per week panic attacks and numbing, no it was daily, thinking of them as someone who needed help (later I came to see them this way, not at the time) helped me feel more forgiving. I still feel disgusted and sometimes angry, and the realizations I've come to don't excuse them for what they did - it was still wrong, just I release the debt they owe for wronging me.

Although some of the people whose behavior I was traumatized by were strangers some weren't. And, for those who weren't I've almost always found out eventually that they were passing along things that had been done to them, though not always. But, I guess seeing them as fellow humans who had also been hurt was what helped me want to forgive, and set my mind to NOT passing on what they passed to me.

The "forgetting" part, well I don't think we have to so much forget. I'm not sure that's possible for me, but over the years some of my early traumas have become less of an influence on me as I'm a lot more capable than I was as a child. And I'm learning to speak up for myself.

Of course everyone is different, and I think different trauma situations are different too.

Wishing you peace and sending support as you work through your situation. It's definitely a process.

After having bacterial meningitis of my brain from chronic sinusitis a craniotomy was done to remove an abcess in abcess in my left temporal lobe. I had a seizure risk. Now it is gone and I remained seizure free during the journey. The path to this point was learned codependency critical parents intergenerational trauma not death with abuse. My paternal grandfather died from epilepsy. I had therapy heath care everything possible to reverse this outcome. Is forgiveness in actions?